The Safest House
by Scheherazade Bet
Summary: A locked room trope, a video camera, some truth and reconciliation, and a spirited discussion of the whole Romeo and Juliet/Flying Demons Monkeys fiasco.


**Title:** The Safest House  
**Summary:** A locked room trope, a video camera, some truth and reconciliation, and a spirited discussion of the whole Romeo and Juliet/Flying Demons Monkeys fiasco.  
**Pairing: **Dawn/Andrew; refs to Warren/Andrew  
**Spoilers: **Everything thru Grave; goes widely & wildly off cannon in the middle of Grave  
**Disclaimers & Thanks: **Not Mine. Thanks to Claire & M for looking over this fic and providing feedback and inspiration. Any remaining mistakes, general weirdness and bad writing habits are mine. Written for The First Rare Ship Swap at Livejournal/AO3.  
**Warnings:**Technically Dawn's ever-so-slightly underage in this (being not quite 16 yet) and Andrew's like 19 (never been able to find a specific age for him in cannon other than younger than Tucker and therefore also Jonathan and Warren). If the age issue/difference squicks you, please run away. I promise nobody's being exploited or abused here though, except Baum and The Bard. (And hey - at least Dawn's older than Juliet was).

"Whoa, whoa. Okay, Andy, let's put the sword down," Xander said.

"No way. I'm not gonna die. Not because of something I didn't even _do_."

The point of the sword wavered, but it was still too close to Xander's neck. Something in Dawn broke. "Xander, we'll have a better chance if we split up."

"What?" Xander sputtered. "No! I'm not letting them just take off-"

"I'll take this one," Dawn grabbed Andrew's arm. "Tara taught me a spell for hiding, but it won't work with more than two."

"Are you completely insane? You can't just-"

"It's our best option!" She began backing away quickly, not releasing her grip on a wide-eyed Andrew, who seemed too shocked to do anything but comply. "We'll be fine. Meet you back in the Doublemeat Palace parking lot in three days!"

"Three-what? No! Wait - no! Dawn!" He cried out, but she was racing down the street, dragging Andrew with her.

"Three days - that's how long the spell lasts!" She called back over her shoulder. She didn't want to give him the chance to think about it. It had to happen fast, had to be as unreal as the rest of the past forty-eight hours.

Xander looked at Jonathan helplessly. "God, what is she doing? I gotta go after them."

Jonathan rested the blade of the sword he carried on his shoulder, watching Dawn and Andrew disappear around a corner. "She's doing what you all _taught_her," he mused with something almost like admiration. "She's being a hero, caring for those who can't-"

"She's just a kid, Jonathan!"

"Well, maybe the kid has a point. We'd probably be better off heading in the opposite direction-"

"I can't just let her leave with him! He's-"

"Harmless," Jonathan said, soothingly. "Seriously. He'll do whatever she wants."

"You don't get it. I have to protect her. It's what I've always done. It's-"

"Look, she said she had some kind of spell, right Xander? She'll be safe as houses, as long as Willow doesn't-"

Jonathan was interrupted as the air around them began to crackle and buzz in a high-pitched metallic way, like a thousand power tools switched on at once.

"Oh, wow, that is not a good sound! We've gotta get off the street now." Jonathan urged.

"Okay, okay." Xander sighed in confusion and defeat. "Come on. But you're going to have to help me come up with the words to explain to Buffy why I left her baby sister to play hide and seek with the Poky Little Puppy."

"Ow!" Andrew dropped the sword. "I think I broke my wrist! Why can't we just hide here?" He gestured down the row of houses that lined the street.

"I told you, we're going to my friend Janice's family cabin in Breaker's Woods. I know where stuff is there. Here, give me that."

Dawn picked up the sword and swept broken window glass off the driver's seat of the car with the edge. Then she reached in and pulled the lever, popping the trunk.

"See if you can find a screwdriver or something back there, okay? I don't know how far I'm gonna be able to get with my Swiss Army knife."

With that she climbed into the rusty Tercel, lay down across the passenger and driver seats on her back, and began fumbling with the access panel under the steering wheel.

"Sorry, it's empty...um...except for this Jolly Rancher." He held up the dusty wrapper. "It's watermelon, want half?"

"Ugh, no thanks," Dawn grunted as she hung upside down. "Check the glove box too. And I need a flashlight. There's actual cobwebs under here, plus some old french fries if you're _really _hungry."

Andrew reached through the driver's side to unlock the back door, opened it, and crawled in across to the other side. He leaned in between the front seats to rummage through the glove box.

"Quit dropping stuff on my legs!" she grumbled. "I'm trying to work-"

"Flashlight, in-coming!" He dropped it into her lap.

"Hey! Watch it!"

Dawn switched on the flashlight and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally. She could see the two red wires and they looked the same as the last-

"So how do you know anything about hotwiring cars?" he asked skeptically.

She stripped the wires with her pocket knife and twisted them together. Then she found the brown ignition wire, stripped it about a half an inch, and carefully touched the end of it to the connected red wires. The engine coughed in protest and came to life. She sat up, flushed and triumphant.

"Vampire babysitter."

"Cool," he breathed in wonder.

"You're driving," she said. "I don't have a license yet. Spike's been teaching me some, but he says I don't brake soon enough and still take corners and turns too fast."

"Mine's...um...still at the police station. It's not like we had time-"

"If we get stopped, we're screwed anyway, right?"

He cocked his head, as if he hadn't considered the possibility until that moment. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, okay."

Andrew never had a girlfriend or even a friend that happened to be a girl. Right then, as he watched her scooch over into the passenger seat while keeping her foot on the accelerator to keep the engine revved, he decided that if he ever got the chance to experience either, he would want somebody exactly like Dawn.

She might not be as strong or as tough as Buffy, he thought, but she was nicer. And probably smarter. And she hung out with vampires socially. If Buffy was Gryffindor, Dawn was totally Slytherin - well, probably more like Ravenclaw, but still. Maybe more dark than light, maybe more like him.

They rode mostly in silence, the quiet punctuated only by her directions. She scanned the street behind them, and to the right and left continually as the houses and businesses of Sunnydale became increasingly sparse. Not that she would have been able to do anything if Willow found them. Dawn shivered, second-guessing herself. If Willow found them before they got indoors, they had no defense at all. In leaving home and family behind, she might just get them both killed for nothing.

They turned off the highway onto a gravel lane which began a twisting hairpin climb into the mountains. There was no moon out, no illumination but the car's headlights to guide them. The droning roar of the wind in the broken window and the cool damp smell of the redwood forest lulled Andrew.

In his head he debated whether Shishio Makoto in _Rurouni Kenshin _could really be considered a Social Darwinist or not, since _On the Origin of Species_, wasn't even published until 1859, and how could you account for this really busy assassin even having time to acquire a copy of the thing in the middle of Meiji era Japan, nevermind the 1877 Fisher article on Irish landholding practices? What, he got the journal from some random missionary? And where did he learn to read? In English, no less? Seriously, the whole thing just didn't hold up. Andrew opened his mouth to ask what Dawn thought about it, but she spoke first.

"Here. Turn left up here."

He turned, and the lane became driveway, the trees so close on either side that they brushed and scraped the sides of the car. They came to a stop in front of a small log cabin with a high peaked roof like a Swiss chalet. Its front porch sagged slightly, and the rocking chairs looked like they had been sitting there waiting since the beginning of time, but the green paint on the front door was fresh, and the well-tended potted plants and hanging baskets seemed welcoming enough.

He shifted into park and knocked the wires loose in a karate-chop motion. Dawn leapt from the car and began poking through the plants with the flashlight.

"Help me find the frog," she called out.

"What?"

"The key's in the frog's mouth, and they move the frog every time they lock up for the weekend." She was crashing through the tall reeds at the side corner of the building. Then there was a splash.

"Ow!"

"Are you okay, Dawn?"

"Uh, yeah...just...found the lily pond. I always forget it's on this side."

"What does it look like?" he asked, taking the steps two at a time up to the door.

"Well, like any other lily pond. Ow! Janice and I were supposed to clean it out but-"

"I meant thing key-hiding thing."

"A frog. A stone frog!" Her patience was wearing as she pulled her soggy and slightly sprained foot out of the muck.

"About the size of a can of beans?"

"The tall kind or the regular?" She was on the steps behind him, flashlight beam bouncing in the dark.

"Found it!" he sang out triumphantly.

"A can of beans? Where?"

"Beside the door." He pointed to the small stone frog sitting at the far edge of the black rubber door mat.

"Great. Well, open up already." she said.

The first thing she did inside was to find the blue frog lamp on the end table beside the couch and switch it on. Squinting in the soft light, she glanced around and breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was the same.

Marta Penshaw, Janice's mom, loved frogs. Over the years, people had given her so many frog-themed presents that their house had become overwhelmed with them. Many of the less-favored frog things ended up at the cabin, or, as Janice and her older sister Amber called it, La Frogvilla.

The throw pillows on the couch were embroidered with green frogs. Brass frogs graced the coffee table, the mantle over the fireplace, and the windowsill. Ceramic frogs in varying sizes and styles hung from the wood-paneled walls. If the place hadn't been her almost second home at times during the weekends after her mother died, it would have been sort of creepy.

Instead the kitch reminded Dawn of homemade tortillas and people who were always happy to see her. It made her think of sips of beer with lime openly stolen from Amber and Marta's glasses. It didn't seem like anything bad or dark could touch her here with the Penshaw frogs on guard, not even Willow.

Then, from far away, came the same rumbling buzzing sound they'd heard on the street beyond the Magic Box, high and metallic and filled with the terrible promise of retribution. Dawn felt the blood in her veins go to ice.

"That didn't take long," Andrew murmured beside her.

Dawn forced herself to take a couple of slow, even breaths. There was still a chance, she told herself. She ran to the open kitchen and flipped the switch beside the sink that should have turned on the overhead light. Nothing.

She tried the switch over the stove. No light there either. Probably a fuse rather than light bulb issue, then. Not that they had time to worry about finding spare fuses. Or light bulbs. She turned and stumbled against Andrew, who was almost huddled against her.

"What now?" he asked.

"The spell. Get the salt from the cabinet beside the fridge - no - the other cabinet, left side."

She opened a drawer and found the long bone-handled knife Marta used to cut meat. Then she bent down and shone the flashlight into the cabinet under the counter until she located a set of measuring cups and a glass bowl.

"Where do you want the salt?" He seemed almost calm, like he trusted her to keep him safe from whatever was howling outside, louder and louder. Oh god.

"Here. On the counter. Okay, we need corn oil too, should be in the same place as the salt."

The blood was going to be the hard part, the icky part. The spell needed a pint of blood, right at two cups. It had been designed to be worked in a home kitchen with ordinary cooking supplies and implements.

It was a quite simple and quick one, as any emergency spell should be, and it would be one hundred percent effective for the promised three days. But it would be expensive. Costly in terms of her courage and energy. With most any project, Xander once told her, the variables were cost, speed and quality. But you only got to pick two of those things at a time.

Her immediate choices for sterilization were in the fridge, a bottle of high end tequila, mostly empty, and a bottle of cheap vodka, half-full. The fridge wasn't cold, smelled musty inside, and the light didn't come on. At least liquor was the only thing left in it. She pulled out the bottle of vodka.

"Um, Dawn? Can't find corn oil. Will Crisco work?" Andrew fought to control the trembling in his hand as he held out the can.

She poured vodka over her left arm and over the knife. "Should be fine. You'll have to melt it first though, we need a half cup. Get a pan from over the stove."

She was so Gold Five, like she dealt with this kind of stuff all the time, he thought. The horrible howling was close now. He found a spoon in a drawer and scraped all of the shortening into the pan. He turned the knob to heat the pan and nothing happened.

"The burner's not light-,"

"Matches in the jar to your left," she answered.

He understood now why they'd had to come all the way out here. She'd said it, she knew where things were here. It made a difference.

"_Stay on target_," he whispered to himself. He struck the match and held it over the burner until blue flame leapt at his fingers. The power might be partially out, but at least the propane wasn't.

Dawn released a breath, measured the salt, and poured it into the glass bowl.

As she drew the point of the knife over the top of her arm the way she had been shown to avoid hitting important bits like arteries, she felt every burning, stinging centimeter of the four long red trails she created between her elbow and her wrist bone. She'd done it before, out of anger and outrage, but not with purpose, not like this. Not with need.

Blood began to well up , thick and viscous, and she held the cup at her side so it could drip down. The first wave of dizziness hit her. No matter how often she saw it outside of its normal fleshy home container, she hated the sight of blood. And she'd seen too much of it. Too much blood and death and-

"Okay, melted."

He sounded almost cheerful. Like they weren't hiding from someone Dawn considered _family._Like people weren't dead. Like there wasn't a really good chance that her sister wasn't...no.

She pushed the thought down. Buffy would be fine. Buffy would fix this mess and she would be proud of her little sister for doing her part. Or, more likely, just really pissed off at her. But she would be fine, regardless.

Dawn gripped the edge of the counter. "Okay, so bring the oil over here and measure it out, then add it to the bowl."

He did as she asked. Another wave came and she swayed as she stood. He reached out and caught her shoulder, only then noticing her arm.

"Oh my god! What happened?"

"It's for the spell," she hissed. Pain began to push past the adrenaline. She looked down at the cup. It was barely full and there was another still to go. "There's not enough," she told him. "It's not coming fast enough. We've got to do my other arm too."

Andrew went pale and took a step back from her. "Oh no. I'm not good with knives and cutting and...just...no. And blood? Uh-huh! No way, no-"

"Your blood wouldn't work. It's my spell, has to be my mine. Those are the rules."

An explosive sound, almost like thunder, shook the walls. They both jumped and gasped. Something out in the dark was coming.

Dawn made the cuts down the length of her right arm, much deeper and not so hesitant this time, not so careful. It seeped out, running down, darker and faster.

She went to her knees and heard herself tell Andrew to put the bowl on the floor. She dropped the measuring cup into it and then she was pulling it out and hoping there was enough blood. She hadn't been able to measure it all right.

There was a deafening crash against the door. She tried to stand, and the room spun. The windows, they had to mark the windows.

She lurched up, bowl in hand, and went to the window above the kitchen sink. Dipping her index finger into the warm mixture, she recited the Latin and drew the symbol on the glass. The air around them seemed to quiver.

She moved to the den window to perform the same ritual, thankful it was across the room from the door. She really didn't want to accidentally see what was on the other side of it. She was growing weaker. She wasn't going to be able to finish in time.

Magic began whispering behind the walls. Andrew's throat tightened, sweat broke across the bridge of his nose and down the back of his neck. What kind of spell was this? It was doing something odd to the air.

There was another horrifying slam against the door. He could see its hinges bending and knew they had only a few seconds left.

"Hurry," he said to Dawn.

She turned to head into the first bedroom, staggered, and fell against him. He tried to push her back up, queasy as his hands slid over her wet, sticky arms.

"Help me," she pleaded. "I can't do it alone...please."

It hurt to breathe. His mouth had gone dry. "Okay, okay. How many more windows?"

"Just two, one in each bedroom."

"Will it work for you to just sit here and say the words if I draw the symbols on the windows?"

"I don't know." Her eyes were closed.

He eased her to the floor and reached into the bowl, gritting his teeth as his fingers touched the thick liquid. It wasn't slimy exactly, more like silky. And still warm. Absolutely nothing like demon goo, a substance with which he was far more familiar, much less unholy hair gel.

He switched off the memory as best he could. As Warren would say, karma was a royal bitch some days, wasn't she? Warren...no, not now. Not right now.

The symbol was easy, something like a wide looped Mobius strip, with pentagrams inside each of the loops and some dots around the whole thing and...damn. "How many dots?" he yelled from the bedroom.

She didn't answer. Had she passed out?

"Dawn!" he yelled louder.

"Five." She sounded like she was falling asleep.

Five. Of course. Most magic worked in odd numbers, he knew that. Something about the asymmetry. Jonathan had explained it to him once, but he hadn't really been listening. Demon summoning was much easier, much more primal somehow, instinctive.

"Okay, go!" he called as he ran to the other bedroom.

Energy flickered over the walls as she spoke the incantation. Just one more to do. He finished the last of the dots on the final window, wondering if he'd used enough of the mixture.

"Done!"

He returned to the den where she now lay on her side, speaking so softly he almost couldn't hear it. He knelt beside her and was moving the bowl so that it didn't tip over when something happened. Dawn went quiet and he could feel the energy from the spell dance over his skin and every surface in the room, rippling outward. It kind of itched, like an old sunburn.

There was a blinding flash of green light and heat and he thought that maybe, finally, Willow had made it through the door after all and she'd been merciful and made it quick. He wondered if they'd leave silhouettes on the floor like those people vaporized by the atomic blast at Hiroshima. A strange sadness ran through him, and he was surprised when he discovered that it wasn't for himself, but for the girl who had tried to save him. She had been so brave, so-

"Andrew? Andrew, I think it worked." She sat up on her elbow and groaned.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"Listen."

He listened. The noise outside was gone. He could hear nothing but the sounds of their breathing. "Where did she go?"

"She didn't. We did."

Her answer made no sense to Andrew. They hadn't gone anywhere, obviously. She must be really out of it. But it was finally quiet and that was something. He glanced down at Dawn, but her eyes were closed again.

He got up and went into the tiny bathroom between the two bedrooms. The light didn't work, but the water ran when he turned the facet. He gathered some towels on a shelf, plus Betadine and gauze in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror over the sink.

She stirred as he sat back down with her. "We're gonna be okay now. You. You did good," she said. She still sounded weak, but at least she was lucid.

"Yeah well, you know, sometimes I amaze even myself," he said, helping her to sit up.

Dawn grimaced as he began to dab at arms with the antiseptic. You didn't grow up with Xander Harris around all the time and not know how to answer that line.

"That doesn't sound too hard," she replied.

"Arise, bride of the mummy!" Andrew commanded with a grin a while later.

He'd wrapped both of her arms in gauze and helped her to the couch, where she promptly seemed to pass out again. Not knowing what else to do for her, he'd done a reasonably decent job of clean up and then began foraging for food in the kitchen.

What were you supposed to feed blood loss and magical energy drainage patients, anyway? Liver and onions? He settled for the chicken noodle soup packets he found in the pantry.

"Mmm. Smells good." She reached out for the mug.

"Breakfast of champions. Guess the sun will be up soon, huh?"

"Well," she began, pausing to swallow the soup, "Actually, not so much. Not for three days anyway."

"So it's going to stay night?" The world outside the windows was so dark, like no night he had ever seen.

"It isn't night anymore, it's nothing," she said.

"We're hidden in nothing?"

A trace of a conspiratorial smile flitted over her features. "Better than hidden. We don't exist at all."

"Wait, we're dead?"

"Nope, just temporarily non-existent. Willow won't come looking for us because she no longer knows there's any us to come after."

"So-"

"Don't worry," she said. "It's only three days. Then we wink back into the world and we meet back up with Xander and Buffy at the Doublemeat Palace and hopefully they've got everything under control by then. Actually, if Buffy can't deal with this by then? She probably can't deal with it at all and we're totally screwed regardless."

"She'll be worried about you, won't she? And, oh god, she'll blame me!" Great. Even if Dawn's sister managed to save him from Darth Rosenberg, who was going to save him from Dawn's sister?

"Well, think of it like this," she told him. "Buffy won't have known I was gone and been missing and worrying about me for three days, just a few hours at most. It'll be alright."

If she could convince Andrew, maybe she could convince herself too.

"So we just sit tight for three days? I guess that's...um...at least the lights are still on. Well, light. One anyway. And we still have running water," he said, trying to focus on the positive aspects of the situation. "So, um...how is it that we have light and running water?"

Dawn shrugged. "Behold the wonders of a well-crafted spell. Tara was smart. She took care of me."

"And also? The toilets flush. But, um...where does it go?"

Dawn snorted. "Really? That's what you got?"

"Sorry. I just...I mean..."

She stiffled a giggle that was edged in fatigue and brittle hysteria. "No, don't be sorry. It's not a criticism. Actually, it's kind of awesome, being able to compartmentalize it all like you do. You don't even seem like you have to _work_at it or anything. It's really hard for me, I just keep seeing her-" Dawn's voice began to waver.

"How did you even find this spell again?" he broke in quickly, uncomfortable with the path of the conversation.

"I didn't find it, Tara designed it for me. She said she got the idea after there was this whole thing where we were all trapped in our house together for a little while. It was sort of my fault, I mean, not really, but there was this guidance counselor and I accidentally made a wish and...yeah. She said that she was inspired by it and that, since stuff was always happening, we needed some kind of backup safe house. This, it's supposed to be a measure of last resort."

Andrew sat listening, trying to imagine the kind of life a person would have that they needed a safe house outside of existence. If a person wasn't a super villain, that is. Or a superhero, for that matter.

"How do we know how many hours have passed?" he asked. "No clocks here, how will we know when the three days are done?"

"It won't be dark outside anymore, and we'll be saved. Or not," she answered.

They were quiet for a while, both of them thinking and trying not to think.

Finally, mostly because he couldn't help himself he asked, "Why are you helping me? Why do you even care?"

"Because I can't _not_care." Grief knotted in her gut, a cold hard lump. "Because people are supposed to take care of each other!"

He recoiled as if she had slapped him.

In a smaller voice she continued. "Because it's what Tara would want. She...she told me once that we're all drops in the same ocean."

Dawn wanted to believe it. That her sister had been in Heaven. That her mother was still. That gone for now wasn't gone forever. That, in the moment of joyful reunion one day, she might remember they had never really been apart at all.

Andrew squirmed at opposite end of the couch, thankful for the gulf of distance between them. There were things he ought to say, he knew it. You were supposed to say comforting things to sad, grieving people. He struggled to remember the right things.

"I...uh...I'm sorry for your loss," he said finally, feeling foolish.

Her stare from across the couch seemed almost dangerous. "Are you?"

"It seems nice though," he plunged on. "That thing about everybody being in the same ocean. All connected - right?"

"Yeah." She seemed remote.

He took her empty mug from her and retreated into the kitchen.

"Heads," he said later. He flipped the coin again. "Heads. Heads. Oh wow - heads! Hey, Dawn! It's like that play we had to read for freshman World Lit...oh. Tails. Nevermind."

"Anything to hold the terrible silence at bay?" she asked.

"I'm not used to the quiet of non-existence yet," he whined. He dropped the quarter back into his pocket and wandered over the bookshelf at the far end of the room.

The books on the top shelf were stacked rather than standing on end, and appeared to be mostly historical romances. The front covers depicted half-clothed women posing in front of mossy antebellum mansions, half-clothed women fleeing from crumbling castles, and half-clothed women bound to masts of burning pirate ships. Andrew could have sworn people wore more clothes before 1900. Maybe if he hadn't dropped out of European History along with the rest of his classes at UC Sunnydale to become a crime lord, he would have been there when they covered that.

The second shelf held three porcelain frogs, a glossy coffee table book titled "Frogs and Toads of the World," and a framed picture of two smiling girls, one about three or four years old and the other closer to maybe twelve or thirteen. Andrew figured the younger one must be Janice.

That would make the older one Amber. Of course it was Amber, she didn't look that different. Amber babysat him and Tucker a few times when they were kids. He suspected it was the demonic rat-things Tucker kept as pets at the time that had ended it. It was too bad; she had been comparatively nice, as babysitters went.

Dawn had said Amber was in law school. Someone who made it out of Sunnydale alive and possibly even unscathed. It hardly seemed possible. He was happy for her.

The bottom shelf was empty, except for a worn brown leather camera bag. Inside was a video camera, an old one. He picked it up, surprised at its size and weight. How had people ever gone around carrying these things?

He picked it up and pressed the red button on the top. Peering through the viewfinder, he found the optics to be quite good. The seemed to be picking up a lot, even with the lone lamp lighting the room. He turned and advanced toward Dawn with it.

"And so, Ms. Summers," he spoke in the tone of the natural disaster scene reporters he'd witnessed on TV, "you were at the center of the crises and had a choice between two men to save from certain death. How did you ever pick which one to leave behind to face annil-"

She gave an exhausted sigh, tipping her head up to look at him. "Hey, Andrew, 1992 called, they'd like their camcorder back now."

He ignored her. "You had one chance, one moment before your desperate plunge into darkness."

"Shut up."

"You had to make a decision." His voice went low and dramatic. "You-"

She turned her face into the cushion. "Leave me alone."

"Come on, Gogo," he said. "Return the ball, can't you, once in a while? Why did you take me instead of Jonathan? The viewers at home want to know."

"You pointed a sword at Xander," she said.

"And that meant?"

"It was safer for you to come with me."

"Safer for Xander?" Andrew grinned at the thought. He _was_awfully good with a blade.

"Safer for me. And Xander." she said.

"How do you figure that?" He was truly curious now.

"Did you have Mr. Colinwirth or Ms. Sonders for PolySci?"

"Gah, I can barely remember. It was four years ago." Andrew switched the camera to his other hand, thinking about it. "It was Sonders, why?"

"So you didn't do the SWOT analysis project?"

"Um...don't think so."

"Okay, so SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. For strategic pre-crisis planning and preventive crisis management you have to analyze all four aspects. Buffy didn't...um...assess the external threat you guys presented." She paused to take a breath. "And because of that, people died."

"So what does that have to do with the sword?" He shifted from right foot to left. The camera was already getting heavy.

"Simple. Jonathan didn't point a sword at either me or Xander. You didn't point the sword at me when it would have been the most effective move that you could have taken in the scenario. You saw Xander as the threat, not me. Therefore, I determined that I would be safe with you...and Xander might not be."

Andrew nodded, recognition lighting his eyes. "I get it! It's like, one door leads to the castle, and the other door leads to certain death!"

"Well, it's really more like the lady and the tiger than Red Guard/Blue Guard," she amended. "See, even if you get the door with the lady behind it, you still have no guarantee she's not holding a sword behind her back."

"But you're not, Dawn. Right?" Just then, it seemed really important for Andrew to know.

"I'm not the lady in this scenario, remember?"

He blinked. "Oh. Oh yeah. I left the sword in the car. And it's not like I would use it anyway."

"Good to hear." She nodded toward the camera lens. "And there's sharper tools here, for that matter - aren't there?"

"What?"

"Give it here."

He couldn't tell if she was angry, or joking with him, or what.

"Look, I'll erase the tape. I was just messing around."

"No, Andrew. Pass me the camera, and then have a seat on the floor."

He did what she asked. There was a gleam of something in her that left him uneasy.

She pointed the camera at him as though it were a gun. "So, Mr. Wells, your bacon's been pulled out of the fire. You've been saved from certain death, whether you deserved it or not. What are your plans when you return to existence? Let them haul your ass back to jail? Run away to Mexico? Disneyland?"

"Um...I don't know. None of those are great options. I kind of need to stay in Sunnydale, if possible. If it's safe. If any of it works out."

"Why? Why remain so close to the scene of..." She swallowed and then continued speaking steadily. "So many crimes? So many bad memories?"

Andrew's head drooped as he pulled absently at the fibers of the frog-green rug under him.

"My brother's a patient at the state psychiatric hospital. You know, the one down at the end of Second Street and Peters? I try to check in on him every so often. Sometimes he even recognizes me. It's been a lot harder since we've been on the lam and all though."

Buffy had never shared much of her prom night adventures, but Dawn had heard rumors about Tucker around school for years. It never occurred to her to wonder what had happened to the guy after her sister caught him.

"So you'll lay low for a few months and then regroup as The Duo and go back to trying to kill The Slayer every week, with sporadic visits to your criminally insane sibling?"

Perhaps she was being overly cruel, Dawn thought. Oh well.

"No! No, of course not," he said, seemingly offended by the notion. "It would be way too hard, with the secret of our identities being out now and everything. We'd have to completely..." He decided not to finish that sentence. "And uh, since Aunt Clara has been out of town so much, I guess if the whole prison thing goes down, I'll have to ask The Slayer to do it."

Dawn wanted to cross her arms, but she had to hold the camera. She let her tone convey the gesture. "Wait. So you want my sister, who Tucker tried to kill, along with their entire class, you want _her_to visit your brother in the mental asylum?"

"It's part of the hero's code," he informed her loftily, "you wouldn't understand. A true hero cannot refuse a task or request if the need is real and the cause is just. And it's really not a big deal, it wouldn't take her but a few minutes to bring him some cookies every once in awhile. Check his charts to see that they're actually following his bathing and walking schedules, that kind of thing. Between the electroshock therapy and the Thorazine dosages, it's not like he could do anything but drool on her."

Dawn rocked back against the couch cushions, astonished. It was the first time she had seen Andrew show concern for anyone but himself. Well, that wasn't completely true, he had helped her, but only because he was depending on her.

Exactly what had led her to think this was a good idea? Was she so desperate to prove herself, playing knight errant to this weird wounded bird? What if he was as crazy as his brother? It wasn't like she could fix him or anything. And maybe sealing herself into this house alone with him for three days hadn't been the smartest choice.

She snuck a glance down at him. His sandy hair was almost matted and standing at odd angles from his face which was too pale. There were tired, dark rings under his eyes like smudges. No, she decided, her first instinct had been correct. She had nothing to fear from him. She switched off the camera and set it on the floor.

"Speaking of bathing," she said, "I'm not sure if the spell includes hot water for the shower or not, but there should be some old sweats and stuff in the left bedroom dresser drawer, if you want to change after. Marta keeps them for guests."

Andrew stood up, pulling at the black turtleneck he'd been wearing for the past thirty-six hours.

"I'll make her," Dawn said suddenly, as he turned to go.

He froze with his back to her. "What?"

"Buffy. I'll make sure she keeps an eye on your brother. If you end up in prison, I mean."

"Why?"

Dawn didn't know why until it came out of her mouth. "Because Tara would."

Andrew thought that wearing other people's pajamas was a little too much like borrowing their underwear, kind of gross. It was better than the alternative, though. In theory, he could have washed his clothes out in the bathroom sink or something, but he wasn't sure if he could stand to put them back on. They reminded him of too many things he didn't want to remember.

He shivered and pulled the blankets up over his chin. The shower had been wonderfully hot, but now he couldn't seem to get warm. There was a hollowness inside of him, infinitely cold.

So Dawn had hidden them successfully. So what? What if the three days went by, and Willow was waiting for them at the door when the spell ended? What if they were just prolonging the inevitable?

The spell _had_been kind of cool, how they'd worked together, making the jump into hyperspace, or wherever they were, just in the nick of time. It had been an incredible escape. He could hardly wait to tell Warren about it...except that he couldn't. Not anymore. Warren wasn't coming back for him, and it wasn't a test or a bad mood that could be placated.

He couldn't quite shake the notion that Warren was just in the next room or out on a supply run, that he would be back at any moment, ready with a new plan. Tears stung just behind Andrew's eyes. Part of him didn't care if Willow found them later. Part of him hoped she did.

He wasn't even aware he was crying until he felt the mattress shift, and by then he was too far gone to pretend he wasn't, or to be embarrassed, or to stop. Dawn slipped under the covers beside him, sitting with her back against the headboard. She smelled like the fruity shampoo from the bathroom. He'd used it too, even though the scent had kind of gagged him.

He rolled over to face her.

"It's going to be all right." she said.

Her skin shimmered white in the gloom. The bandages he'd wound around her arms hung loose and damp. He wondered if he should re-do them later. Then he wondered at his ability to think about something like that, even as he wept. It was as though he had stepped outside of himself and stopped to look back, insulated from the shock and pain.

"Andrew?" She sounded far away.

"What am I going to do without him? What am I going to be?" He had to ask, but he didn't really expect an answer.

He was frightened; she could see it. Frightened not of impending violence, not of the thing under the bed, but of the space and time that must be filled with existence if existence continued. Dawn knew that fear all too well.

How did you keep crawling out of bed in the morning? How did you face the well-meaning faces? How did you self-correct, in passing conversation, from present tense to past without shattering every damned time?

_Mom/Buffy/Tara does - no - did. She did. They did._

"I...I loved him, I really did." The part of him that was hovering outside and separate went still. He'd said it out loud. In front of someone else.

"I know," she murmured.

She rubbed his back like her Mom did for her so many nights after the divorce. Buffy had done it sometimes after Mom died, and Tara had after-

He clenched his jaw and swallowed hard. "You must think it's so...I mean, I'm sure it's like, horrifying. Sorry."

He began to roll over, to pull away, but she caught his shoulder.

"No! No of course not! I never got what all the fuss was about anyway. A person loves pie, a person loves cake; hell a person loves both with chocolate sauce and candy sprinkles. Who cares?"

Her response was so immediate, so earnest. It seemed impossible that people like her even still existed, in Sunnydale of all places. A sound escaped from his chest and he wasn't sure if it was a laugh or a sob. Probably both.

"I meant because of what he did...what we did."

She wanted to stop him, to shut him up, to say no. No, we don't mourn the monsters. Not ever. But then, she knew better.

"Grieving is just grieving. It's not inherently good or evil, and it certainly isn't horrifying. You feel what you feel. I don't get to judge that. Nobody does...well, nobody should."

"Willow wanted vengeance. Why don't you? Didn't you love Tara?"

The question would have sounded more villainous if his voice hadn't gone all quivery and childish.

"Yeah. Well, not like _that_, but yeah," she sighed wearily.

"So?"

"So, I guess...I guess I've seen it. And um, heard about it. Vengeance. Anya used to be a vengeance demon; did you know that? She was once the Patron Saint Of The Women Scorned."

"Sort of," Andrew answered. "Not the saint part though. She was a saint?" He scooted closer to Dawn, enticed by the possibility of a story and the mesmerizing weight of her hand running slowly back and forth over his shoulder.

"That was her title, but I don't think the demonic realms have actual saints. If we survive this, I'll ask her. So anyway, Anya Jenkins, actually she was called Aud back then, she started out human, but this Viking called Olaf she was in love with cheated on her-"

"Wait. Did you say _Viking_, Dawn?"

"Um, yeah. She's like over a thousand years old."

"Oh. Wow."

"Yeah, so she turned Olaf into a troll and the king of the vengeance demons, D'Hoffryn - at least, I think he's their king- he was so impressed with that, he made her a vengeance demon too." Dawn said.

"That's amazing."

"I know, right? So Anya spent all these centuries dispensing vengeance."

"And?"

"And it seems like it wasn't very satisfying. She claims it was, but I don't think she was any happier then than she is now. She has good reasons _not_to be happy right now, but I'm just saying she's gotten more vengeance than anyone I've ever met and it hasn't made things any better for her. She's just as miserable as the rest of the Scoobies. Tara was the only one-" She broke off.

_Here it comes_, thought Andrew.

"Tara is-was the only one who knew how to be happy," she told him, swallowing hard. "And she wouldn't have any use for vengeance. Tara would say vengeance only escalates violence, and that holding onto anger is like grabbing at the embers of a fire with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you're the one getting burned. She would say if we want things to be better, then we have to rise above anger and conflict. We have to focus on compassion and generosity."

Dawn's words came out in torn up little breaths. "Tara would forgive you. She wouldn't begrudge your grieving. She...she would even forgive Warren."

Neither spoke for a few minutes after that, Dawn somewhat shocked by her own thoughts and Andrew unready to share his. The quiet enveloped them.

"I can't believe he's gone," Andrew finally confessed.

It unnerved her, this inability to let go of froth and facade, of reference and quotation and borrowed mythology. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream, stop it! Stop making it into a movie! This isn't a movie, especially not _that_movie!

Instead, she shifted languages, hoping he could understand the sentiment, even if the context wasn't quite appropriate. "There wasn't anything you could have done."

Andrew made a noise, something between a snort and a groan.

"Oh, what, you bought the gun for him?" she demanded.

"No but-"

"Did you pull the trigger?"

"No."

"See, you might have done some bad stuff but you can't-"

"But all I had to do was look up," he said softly.

"Look up?"

"We had these jet packs for escape after the armored truck job. Warren took off and I fired mine, but I was so scared, I wasn't really paying attention, and I kind of blasted straight into the roof."

"Ow." She replied, grimacing in sympathy.

"The thing is, if I hadn't screwed up, everything would be okay. Nobody would have had to die."

She shuddered at this perspective, but pressed on.

"You can't know that for certain, Andrew. Do you really think he would have given up on his obsession with killing Buffy that easily? After trying so hard for so long?"

"It was never about _killing_. It was about defeating The Slayer, our worthiest adversary."

She willed herself to remain calm, to trade fury for compassion. He was so exasperating, the way he seemed to refuse to acknowledge things. The way he seemed to automatically gloss over truth in favor of story.

"Killing or defeating, at the end of the day it still means that my sister wasn't going to come home to me - right?"

"I don't know," he said. "I guess. It's just...no. You're right, you're right."

She experienced a moment of something like pride, followed by a deep and overwhelming sense of exhaustion.

"I should let you sleep," she said, swinging her legs off the bed.

Andrew sat up. "Don't. Please don't go. Don't leave me."

She stopped. She knew exactly what it felt like, that moment of renewed loss and almost panic when you're left alone in the dark with your grief. Dawn couldn't do that to anyone.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. I'll stay with you. I'm not going anywhere."

She reached behind them to stack the pillows and then leaned back into them, drawing him down with her. His arms slipped around her waist, his head rested between her breasts, and it didn't seem weird or awkward at all. He was pleasantly warm against her as she held him.

For all the times she had been comforted in the same way by others, it felt good to know how to do it. To be, for once, the one providing instead of always being the one accepting it. To know what to do. To know from experience and instinct that her presence and touch were far more important than any words. To know that she actually had something to give and to be able to give it. To know its rightness.

Drooling. He was actually drooling on her. Gross. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and wondered how many hours had passed.

He'd been dreaming. He was back at Sunnydale High School and Dawn was there too, going on about saints and pilgrims and purged sin, but she spoke in some Elvish dialect he'd never fully learned and he could only understand about every third word.

They had slid down the pillows in their slumber, until he lay half on top of her. Andrew suspected that the better part of valor would include discretely moving, perhaps to the opposite edge of the bed. He hated the thought of it.

He'd never been close like this with anyone. Well, not since he was little anyway. It was too nice to give up just yet. He hadn't even known how much he wanted it until now. Needed it.

As if in response, she stirred. He closed his eyes, expecting swift eviction, but instead, her lips brushed over his forehead, cool and dry and chaste. His stomach clenched.

He never felt old before, until she brought him here. Safe or not, he didn't think he was going to be able to stand her compassion and generosity. Her forgiveness, he couldn't bear it. It was too much.

Emotion blossoming, he raised up, mimicking her gesture carefully. She gave a sleepy sigh and kissed him again, this time on his jaw. Andrew returned it immediately, obediently, like it was a lesson to be memorized. The third time she hit the corner of his mouth and lingered there.

He mirrored her motion, his heart pounding in his ribcage as his blood ran southward. He wanted to either stop her or beg for more, he wasn't sure which. He wanted to ask, Dawnwhatareyoudoinggodwhatar eyoudoing, but she didn't offer any explanation, and he lay there trading feverish little almost-innocent kisses back and forth with her until he began to believe that just maybe she hadn't really forsworn vengeance after all.

He pulled back, panting, to try and read her, but she followed him upward, pressing her mouth to his. Their noses bumped, and their teeth clicked together clumsily. There was too much fabric between them, and they were both pushing at waistbands and pulling at hems until it was gone and her body was a hot, soft line against his.

She couldn't have defended her actions. They were just all she had to express what was inside her; fear and wonder and exhilaration and sorrow all mixed up together. Dawn threaded her fingers through his hair and wrapped her legs around him, bringing him closer. He gasped at the contact, and it made chills run through her.

"Wait," he said. "Dawn, we don't have-"

"Oh," she answered, understanding his hesitation. "That's all covered. Magically warded up the proverbial wazoo. Way safer and more reliable than commercial prophylactics. We can...uh...thank Willow later." She giggled nervously. It was a terrible thing to say. Why had she said it that way?

She relaxed when he chuckled into her hair. "Um..._much, much later._Please?"

"Andrew?"

He paused along the trail of kisses he was making between her ear and her collarbone. "Yes?"

"This is okay? I mean, with you?"

"Very."

"But you know you don't have to, right? I thought...I know I'm not-"

The tip of his tongue flicking down her neck was so distracting. She couldn't put the thoughts together.

He understood her question, even unarticulated.

"Can I tell you a secret, Dawn?"

"Okay." She felt herself smiling. She couldn't help it.

"Right here," he bit down lightly on the skin over her throat for emphasis. "You taste like candy sprinkles."

"What," she began. "Oh..._oh._"

It was faster and far more disorganized than in the movies. It was more rocking than wanton thrusting, more rueful smiles and oh-sorrys than cries of passion, more creaking bedsprings than slick low moans, more frenzied, trembling, helpless and hopeless attempting to crawl inside one another and hide amid unraveling bandages than celebration of carnal lust.

After, she lay with him, legs intertwined, sticky and wet, watching the shadows of the furniture in the room blur around the edges. She thought about how it hadn't hurt, despite what she'd always heard, how she hadn't shaved her legs in a few days and if he noticed. Andrew, amazingly, didn't seem any more or less evil than before, unlike _some_people's choices. She thought how she probably ought to be more ashamed of that kind of smug, petty sibling stuff.

It was such a strange state of being, he thought, simultaneously drowning in the most devastating anguish of his life but also filled with the deepest joy he'd known since childhood. Terrible and wonderful and, being in night, seeming but a dream.

He thought about how young she was, how he was now probably guilty of inappropriate behavior with a minor, just one more addition to the list of charges, and how he could just _hear _Warren's unabashed approval.

_Of all the ways we tested The Slayer, this defiling of the baby sister took serious huevos! You win dude_, Warren would say proudly. _It's the ultimate middle finger in the Slayer's general direction!_

And just what had he won? Oh yeah. Compassion. Generosity. Forgiveness.

He was still smiling at the thought when the bile began to erupt in the back of his throat. Talk. He had to talk to her, or he was going to start screaming and he wouldn't be able to stop.

He was trying to decide the right thing to say, something witty or least properly reverent, probably beginning with oh-bright-angel and winging it from there, but she spoke first.

"I never did this before," Dawn said.

"I never did either," he said. "With a girl."

"But you did with Warren?" she asked.

There was nothing judgmental or negative in her tone, just a sort of innocent curiosity.

"I...um...I sucked him off a couple of times, that's it. But it was no big deal. Not to him anyway. We never kissed or anything like that."

It felt good to say it out loud, he thought, to tell someone, to tell her. Especially her. He found himself wishing he could have thought of another way to put it. But that was stupid, right? She heard far worse in the halls of Sunnydale High School every day.

Maybe he should have been classier and said fellatio. So clinical though. Blow job? No. Gave head? No. Went down on? Absolutely not. Polished the knob? Idiotic and wholly inaccurate. Why were euphemisms always worse?

"So I'm the first girl - wow - no _person_you ever kissed?" She seemed impressed. Like it was something to brag about. Weird girl.

"Yeah, I guess so, other than a spin the bottle game at Miriam Neisbaum's bat mitzvah, five years ago. You?"

"Well, there was this guy Justin, but he turned out to be a vampire, so I don't know if that counts," Dawn replied thoughtfully.

"_Oh my god_, you kissed a vampire? That totally counts! Tell me more, and don't you dare leave out details!"

"Jealous?" She grinned.

"Very! Spill it!"

"You goof!" She kissed him instead.

He decided that she had the smoothest skin he'd ever felt. Not that he had much to compare it to, but still. His hand trailed down her belly with feather-light fingers and found several raised scars there.

"What happened to you, Dawn?"

_Oh, sweet girl, I can do magic!_

Dawn remembered the black suit, the terrible smile.

"Please help me," she had pleaded. "She's coming." She had known by then that he wasn't there to save her, but she'd had to ask anyway. Couldn't stop herself.

_"Hey kid. Wanna see a trick?"_

No. No, she didn't want to see. She didn't want to see any of it. She shut her eyes and hugged her arms around herself as he wielded the knife.

_"Shallow cuts, shallow cuts...__l__et the blood flow free..."_

Her blood was obeying him, and it stung more this time and it was flowing and oozing from underneath the bandages and Andrew was going to have to-

She swallowed and opened her eyes. Andrew was frozen, up on one elbow. She tugged his arm to pull him close again, and he twisted until he lay with his head in her lap.

"His name was Doc," she said. "He was a demon supplicant who tried to use my blood to break down the barriers of this dimension and open a portal for the hell-god that he worshiped to pass through."

Andrew looked up at her, eyes wide. "It was coming to conquer our world?"

"No, she wanted to go home."

"Just wanted to go home? Like Dorothy?" He asked.

"Yeah, but it would have destroyed our world. And she didn't care. She was _evil_, Andrew. As in, Hell. God. She rampaged through Sunnydale looking for The Key...well, looking for me. She hurt so many people. She would have killed all of us if Buffy hadn't sacrificed herself to stop it."

"Buffy did?"

Dawn paused, the last moments on the tower re-playing in her mind.

_"Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. But this is the work that I have to do."_

"Damned right she did," Dawn said to Andrew. "You - you wouldn't even _be_ here, if it weren't for Buffy. Like, so many times over."

"Oh," he said meekly. "Right."

"Right," she confirmed.

"Right," he said again, more softly, pressing his cheek against her leg.

She stroked his back, almost as though he were a cat or something. He didn't mind. Some of his flesh there was numb, so he could feel only the pressure of the touch. It was nice. Her hand moved round in lazy circles and he began to drift again until she stopped abruptly.

"What are these, Andrew?"

He knew what she had found, his own scars, the few marks that criss-crossed between his shoulder blades; flat, slick and white.

"Um...belt buckle. Stepfather number two...well, just my mother's boyfriend really. He wasn't around long."

She drew a sharp breath. "Oh god. Fuck! Oh my god!"

He shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

It occurred to him that she might be the only person left in the world besides Tucker who knew about them. He'd been careful not to let their Aunt Clara see. He was pretty sure Warren had known about the scars, being such a genius and all, but he'd been really careful for a long time not to let them show. He usually wore multiple layers, button-down shirts on top of long-sleeve tees, changing in the bathroom for P.E. in school. And he wouldn't have been caught dead on a beach anyway.

"God," she said again, more quietly. Her hands moved over him, both of them now, rubbing along his spine, up his neck, into his hair and then back down again. "Oh god."

He didn't get it. The same girl who spoke so casually about being hunted by hellgods and attacked by demon minions; who, in fact, bore some really scary scars from these attacks, was getting freaked out about his very boring ones. He would never understand the female of the species, he thought. Not her, not any of them. But that touch, he hadn't known how much he wanted it, longed for it. He closed his eyes and willed her silently not to stop, maybe like, ever.

"I'll probably miss her funeral," Dawn said between bites of canned tuna a while later. Already, timed seemed so eerily absent...no sun, no birds outside, no planes overhead, nothing.

Andrew nodded. "There won't even be one for Warren probably. There's nobody to go but me and Jonathan anyway, and it's not like there's even a body-"

"I will," she said quickly. "If we survive this and everything. I'll go with you...um...if you want."

Wonder and confusion mixed and twisted his expression. "You would do that for him?"

"No! Not for him! For _you_," she spoke more gently. "Funerals are for the people left behind."

"Oh," he said. "Right. I mean...I don't even really know...like...what to do or anything. I mean, he was pretty rabidly atheist...in terms of worshiping higher powers or whatever. It might not be-"

"That's okay. It doesn't have to be exactly spiritual or anything. It could even just be us lighting a candle or saying a passage down on the beach. He didn't have any family?"

"His mother's in...um...Tampa, maybe? Somewhere else anyway, far from here. It was the first thing he did, with the...um...money. Bought her a condo-"

"With the money you guys stole?"

"Uh, well yeah," he answered.

"That's one part I'm pretty glad to miss."

"What part, Dawn?"

"The family part. Tara's family? Horrifying people. Just awful. They told her she was a demon!"

"She was a demon?"

"No, of course not! They just said that because...they're horrifying. And awful! We were all she had! They probably won't even co-" Her voice cracked. Anguish swelled in her chest and the sadness she'd held at bay swept over her.

Andrew took the tuna can and the fork from her gently and put them on the floor beside him. "Oh Dawn, at least she had you. And The Slayer. And, hey...can't forget Crazy Wicca Bitch O-Doom, right?"

"Okay, _so_ not helping," she retorted bitterly. But she slumped in the circle of his arms. It wasn't like she had anywhere else to go. Her show of strength had only been a reaction to his seeming weakness, and his fear and pain had been an almost welcome distraction from her own. She wondered if this was how Buffy felt all the time.

That did it. If she could be this brave, this _decent,_ Andrew thought, he could too. For once, he could actually help someone. For once, he knew how. He stood, scooping up the tuna can.

"Get the rest of your clothes on, Dawn. Hurry up."

"We can't go anywhere," she said. "I told you already."

"Yeah, I got that. Three days of darkness and non-existence. Peachy. But you don't want to be half-naked on camera, do you?"

"What? No! What are you doing?" She scrambled up and headed for the bedroom to find her pants.

Andrew stopped in his path from the kitchen and turned to call to her, "Trust me."

"So what am I supposed to say?" Dawn fidgeted with the fringe of the couch cushion.

"What was she like?"

"Why are we doing this again?"

"So everyone will know...what was lost. So no one will forget her - ever."

"I just...I don't know what...I don't even know where to begin."

"Well," he said. "I never knew her. I mean, I saw her on the video feed a few times-"

"From when you were spying on us?"

"Um, right. And at school! She was around campus some, that first semester. I think we might have even been in the same contemporary poetry class, but I kinda stopped going, so I never met her or anything like that."

"Oh," Dawn said. She sagged back against the cushion, thinking of the exhibit of Rodin drawings Tara had taken her to see in the art department gallery...how long ago now? Three Saturdays? Four? It didn't matter anymore, did it?"

"Dawn?"

"Yeah okay, okay. This is hard."

"What was her favorite color?"

"Blue, I guess. Or, wait - no. Green. It's got to be green. She wears-I-mean-_wore_...she wore green all the time," Dawn said.

"And...um...what was her favorite food?"

"I'm not...well...she made the best pancakes ever, but I guess she didn't really eat many of them herself. They were mostly for me maybe...but okay, yeah...she really liked this orange taffy. From Hiya Sugar, down from the Magic Box-but...this stuff...it isn't _her_. These details, they don't...I mean, while Buffy was gone she made dinner every night! Even after she had to move out, she...checked on me. Called me. Made sure things were okay. She did things when there was no one else to do them!"

Andrew nodded sympathetically from behind the video camera. "Good, this is good. This stuff is important. You're doing great. Just...keep your chin down a little more."

Dawn blinked and squinted in single lamplight, which was so close to her face she could feel its heat. "Tara was good. She was kind, like my mother was. She never...well just...she didn't judge. She told me once all people have hearts."

"Which, of course is important, in terms of circulation and everything?" He prodded.

"She said each heart has its own leanings, meaning like perspective or point of view. Another person's right can be our wrong and vice versa. She thought that most conflict was caused by um...the fallacious assumption of mutually exclusive existence, and could be resolved by more-wait...how did she put it? Oh yeah, mutual understanding of the other and of oneness." Dawn grinned, proud she had remembered it all, even if she didn't think she completely understood it.

"Oh wow, she was like your Yoda," Andrew breathed.

"I guess," she said. "Sort of. Yeah. And...and it's why I don't think that you and Jonathan should go to jail."

"You don't?"

"Well, no. You can't possibly ever come to understand the other...i.e. my sister, or even me for that matter, rotting in jail! How could you see consequences of your actions and inactions, see how your right has been our wrong? How could you possibly make amends from so far away? It's a stupid idea, unless you're a danger to others!" She paused to look at him. "Do you think you're a danger to others?"

He thought she sounded exactly like Lucy Van Pelt. It made him smile for a moment and then his head dropped. "No, not any more," he said. "Not ever again."

"See? Then jail would be wasteful," she said. "The way I see it, you owe us. You should be ours, like - I don't know. The spoils of war or whatever."

Andrew switched off the camera and set it down to shake out his wrists. "Gah, hang on, these old ones get heavy!"

"Are you even listening?" She shook her head in frustration.

"Of course. Spoils of war, enslavement-"

"Stop it! That's not what I meant! Look, Willow's...um, it may take her a while to get better-"

"Oh," he said, sarcasm edging into his tone. "You think they make a cream for that vein issue-"

"Shut up!"

"Sorry."

"It's been hard," she said after taking a breath. "Even after Buffy got back, with Giles gone and everything...and it's going to be again. It was hard when we fought Glory, even with everybody helping, and now with Willow...and Tara..." She paused, rallying her thoughts and then plunged on. "You could, I dunno, help us. You seem like you kind of have a brain, and at least you know about the hellmouth and stuff. You're not one of those people who think Sunnydale High School is regularly attacked by gangs on PCP."

No, he thought. Not gangs. Just some of my friends, and my brother...and me. He watched her, curled on the couch and shredding the edges of a pillow with her fingers, not even appearing to notice the mess she was making with it. She was so earnest, so sweet it made his teeth ache.

"I can't, I'm the bad guy - remember? I can't just switch sides. It's not done," he told her.

"Don't be stupid - of course it is! How could wars ever get finished if some people didn't eventually switch sides?"

"It's a nice idea, Dawn, I guess, but-"

"Look, you want things to be better, right? You _must_ want things to be better, you're not evil-"

Andrew dialed the white balance knob back and forth on the camera. It might be old, but the optics were pretty incredible. Even with their one light source all the way over by Dawn, the lens could pick up the individual fibers in his shirt. And what did she even mean by better? Better than what?

"Um, hello, super-villain? Kind of a requir-"

"No! No, Andrew, I've seen evil! I know evil and you're not it!"

He wondered vaguely if he ought to feel insulted.

"Listen, don't you get it? This is an opportunity! This is what Tara would want!"

There was a strange gleam that began to burn in her eyes as she spoke. She looked almost crazed somehow, almost dangerous and film noir, surrounded by shadows. He was at once fascinated and, perhaps, a little frightened.

"What would Tara want?" He asked.

"For the conflict to be resolved peacefully! For the end of all of the retaliation and counter-retaliation. For reconciliation through realization of...um...our non-mutually exclusive existence."

Andrew began to suspect she had lost it, gone off the deep end in her grief. It hurt to watch it.

"Dawn look, there's not going to be any retaliation, okay. Jonathan and I will go peacefully - I promise. You have my word."

"No!"

"No?" He was really confused now.

"No. I don't...I don't want you to go."

"Oh," he said, finally blushing in understanding. He wanted to go to her then, wanted to try and taste the meaning of her words on her mouth. He didn't quite dare. Once had been crazy and impossible enough. "So what should we do?"

"Well, we have a start," she said. "You know about Tara now. But someone else who knew about Tara might not know about you, so we have to tell them. My sister put your brother in jail years ago-"

"Well, it was only for a little while. Then he was transferred to-"

"Right, but it happened."

"Yes," Andrew agreed. "It did."

"So, what I'm saying is, these things are all linked. There's been like this escalation-"

"Yeah, it's just-"

"People are _dead_, Andrew!"

"I know," he said.

She leaned forward, clutching the cushion to her chest. "We're neither weak or incapable. We don't have to just sit around and wait and hope for the best. That's been the problem all along, they just wait for things to happen and then there's this race to save and survive. There's never been any plan, any real strategy other than don't die. We can make things better we can stop this cycle of, I don't know, chaos. Bad karma. Whatever. You and me."

He wanted to believe in her, and in her simplistic, childish way of looking at things. He thought the world inside her head must be a much nicer place than his own. "And you think - what Dawn? My life story will so melt The Slayer's heart she'll grant me a reprieve? Because you asked?"

She nodded, serious. Focused. "It's like what you said about the code of the hero. How can she refuse when the true need is evident? We just have to show her, with our stories. With our truths. And yeah. Maybe because I asked."

"Fine," he said, picking up the camera again. "You first."

"So you were born in Los Angeles?" Andrew addressed her more formally, zooming in on her face.

"I lived there with my mom and dad and my older sister until the divorce. Then Mom and Buffy and I moved here when I was eleven."

"And what happened to your dad?"

Dawn shrugged. "He stayed in L.A. and...and we kind of didn't see him very much after that."

"That must have sucked."

"Yeah."

"Then what happened?"

"Um...well...I was a kid and Buffy, Buffy was the Slayer and we kept it a secret from Mom. We went to school, and sometimes back to L.A. for vacations. We watched TV, and had birthday parties, and shopped at the mall and all the other stuff people do, except last year? We found out it was all fake." She paused to watch his reaction. He gave none.

"Fake?"

"Fake as in not real. As in, invented by some monks who manipulated Buffy into hiding and protecting this cosmic energy entity by disguising it as the sister she never had. They changed history and added me in."

For a moment, Andrew almost forgot the camera. "Okay, wait. You're saying-"

"It was all lies. I was never born. I never lived in L.A. I've actually never met my father, and I didn't even _exist_ until summer-before-last."

He regarded her with the kind of awe usually reserved for limited collector editions and Wondercon Masquerade Night. "So...what are you, Dawn?"

"I'm me, a human person. I just wasn't before. I was this ancient energy called The Key."

"You said that earlier, but I don't really understand what that means."

"Well, I was one thing, and now I'm a different thing, mostly. My blood doesn't open the universe any more; at least Tara didn't think it could. But it can, sometimes, make little temporary pockets...if I need it to."

"Like now?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"And what was it like, uh...before you were a person?"

"I only remember being Dawn." She looked up at him instead of into the lens, willing him to understand. "It's kind of a secret still, even Janice doesn't know, just the Scoobies. And now you. You're the first person I ever told," she said shyly.

"I'm honored," he breathed.

"But you can't tell anyone, okay? Please Andrew, someone like-"

"Doc might try to hurt you again?"

"Well, not Doc. Buffy killed him. But still, you can't-"

"No," Andrew whispered. "No, I'll never tell anyone. And, oh crap, this shouldn't even be-"

"Wait, don't erase it," she said as he bent to fumble with the camera. "We can destroy the footage once...once everyone who needs to see it has seen it."

"Everyone? I thought we were going to give this to The Slayer and-"

""Everyone who's been involved has to see it. Everyone who's been caught up in this, my sister, Giles, Xander, Anya, Willow - when she's better, of course."

Andrew shuddered visibly. "Okay," he said. "But now there's another problem, providing we survive beyond this issue. The Slayer and her crew will know that I know. It's um...kind of scary information to have."

Dawn smiled at him, but he saw a cunning underneath it that was a little devious and almost disturbing.

"All the more reason she shouldn't try to put you in prison. Someone might try and torture our secrets out of you there. She'd be far better off keeping you close and out of harm's way."

"Um...shouldn't I erase _that_ part?"

Her grin widened. "Oh no," she said, "Absolutely not."

The girl was downright Machiavellian he thought, throat tightening with admiration.

"Um...all right, tell me what happened next, Dawn?"

Her face fell. "My Mom got sick, and then she died. Actually, that was before Glory and everything. Sort of."

"That must have been awful."  
She picked at the bandage covering her forearm. "You never really fill that hole. It's like a piece of you goes missing or something."

"Well, it's only been - what, a year?"

"A year and three months," she said. "It's not like we even got time to miss her, not enough. I mean, there was Glory, and then there was Buffy...being gone...and the only reason I didn't die that summer too was because she made me promise not to. Willow had to reprogram the robot because we didn't know when or if the next Slayer would arrive. We weren't sure how it would work since Faith was out of the picture. We did the best we could...did you ever see him working on it?"

Andrew blinked, lost. "Who worked on what?"

"Warren. On the robot, the one made to look like Buffy."

"Oh. Right. Um...yeah, I guess I saw it. Just a little. Maybe once." He stood with the camera, moving carefully to the left, attempting to create a hand-held dolly effect. He really didn't want to talk about Warren. Not right now, not on camera, not to anyone except maybe Dawn. But the rest of them? Forget about it.

Something began to shift in her posture then. He could hear the chance in her tone too.

"I know what it was for. The robot. Originally."

"Oh," he said.

"Did...did you...or any of you ever..." she paused.

"What? No! No - I swear!"

"I slept with it," she said.

He couldn't have heard her correctly, he thought.

"I held it like a teddy bear every night last summer. I pretended it was her. It was the only way I could sleep. It was the only way I was able to keep my promise to my sister. I hadn't thought about it until now, but I want you to know it."

He let out a partial sigh of relief. "What part?"

"The part where Warren built a robot that saved me. Something good came of something that he did, when it was intentional or not. It happened."

Her eyes blazed with an intensity he couldn't begin to understand. Was he supposed to thank her? Or book her a padded room next to Tucker's?

"And then The Slayer rose from the dead, right?" His voice cracked nervously.

"Yes," Dawn agreed. "Willow and Tara and Xander brought my sister back and we were almost happy for a little while. And then you guys decided to go and fuck up our lives all over again, for no damned good reason."

"But it wasn't like that," he protested weakly. "Okay, it wasn't _supposed_ to be like that. It was about defeating a worthy adversary on the field of battle. She was our arch nemesis, our true polar opposite. We never meant...I mean, we had nothing but respect-"

"Bullshit!" She interrupted furiously. "I nearly ended up in foster care! Defeat my sister? You almost disintegrated her with that stupid invisibility gun!" She fought the urge to leap from the couch and strike him, to scream and tear at him until there was nothing left. Her whole body trembled with it.

"I'm sorry." He couldn't look at her.

"Sorry? You were going to kill her! _For fun_!"

"Dawn-"

"God, I can't!"

"Please, just lis-"

"I can't do this!" She rolled onto her side, still hugging the now-threadbare cushion and sobbed.

He sat perfectly still, waiting until she calmed down. When she quieted to sniffles and hiccups he said, "You're right. What we did isn't forgivable. I can't fix it. But let me do this, finish this. I'll confess everything to you, everything that I know about, and then when the spell ends here, I'll turn the tape and myself in to the police."

Dawn struggled to separate person with deed in her mind, to reconcile what, even with Tara's philosophy and strength of belief to guide her, she felt her reaction ought to be and what it actually was. She found what she wanted most was for this part to be over. She didn't want to be angry anymore, not with Andrew, not with anyone. She'd been angry for such a long time, maybe forever.

"Turn it off," she said, still lying on her side. "The camera. Off. For now."

He followed her instructions, leaning over to set the camera down far from his chair, as though surrendering a weapon.

"It won't work, Andrew."

"What won't?"

"Twiddling your thumbs in jail, it won't help me or my sister. It won't make up for what you did. But you're wrong, you can make amends."

"How? I...I'll do anything. I'll be The Slayer's slave or whatever - anything you want, just tell me and I'll do it."

Dawn's breath hitched. "First of all, you can't call her that anymore. Her name is _Buffy._ She's a person, not some Marvel mega-mama! She has a family and she's had kind of a crappy life in parts, just like you. She gets scared and sad sometimes too even!"

He stared at the floor, stunned. "I know," he whispered.

"No, you don't. But you will, and then you're going to have to live with it. You're going to see the damage you caused, how you hurt her, how you hurt _me._

He swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"I found her, Andrew."

"Who?"

"Tara. After she was shot, I was the one who found her, after Willow left. I came home from school and she was there. I stayed with her...um...the body. I couldn't just leave her alone."

There was an audible thud. Dawn hadn't been aware that she had shut her eyes until she opened them to see Andrew kneeling on the floor, supplicant.

"Oh, god, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He crawled toward her on hands and knees, hair falling into his eyes. When he reached the edge of the couch, he bent himself until the top of his head rested against her shins. "I'm sorry," he said again.

She believed him completely, it was such a relief to let herself trust him. He was experiencing remorse; she could see it. If he felt guilt and regret for his actions, then maybe...maybe he could understand good and be good. And if he could be good, then maybe, maybe they would let her keep him. Well, not like a stray puppy, or anything, but it was just...somehow something about him seemed to resonate with something in her. Like part of her recognized him as kindred, a fellow outsider.

She raised up on her elbow and reached out with her other hand to rub between his shoulder blades. His back was warm and he sighed deeply. Her fingers slipped almost of their own volition underneath the stretched out neckline of the borrowed shirt, seeking the even warmer skin there. It wasn't merely pleasant or soothing for her, though it was those things too. With the action came this sense of connectedness, of peace, of...warmth. Okay, well...heat.

It wasn't just his flesh, heat suffused her from the inside out as her hand moved lower and lower. Her body's entire attention stirred and was pulled by the physical presence of him. There was a surge of heat in her chest...a hot rushing in her ears. He moaned softly and heat blossomed between her legs.

Andrew lifted his head to look up at her and the blend of confusion and hope she saw there sent delirious hot waves of sensation through her. She sat up and leaned forward, awkwardly and he met her halfway to brush her lips with his, cautious and gentle. Heat spread like fever between them. She immediately needed more: closer, deeper.

She could taste sweat and tears as she kissed him and was glad they weren't just hers. It wasn't just lust that moved her, that intoxicated her with its euphoric crazed chemistry, but the sense of non-aloneness. The sense, already, that he could be hers, that she could have him forever if she wanted. If they let her, which would never happen if-

Her pulse thudded in her throat. His hands were at the waistband of sweatpants she wore and she could feel her stomach fluttering and turning over in a frenzy of emotion. Okay, she thought. Okay, just one more time. They never have to know. We don't have to tell anybody if we don't want. We don't even exist; it doesn't count right now anyway.

She was melting. He kissed the exposed skin of her thighs, over the tops and then the insides, and then further and further up. Oh, so _this_ is what all the fuss is about, she mused. Well, now it makes sense! She wondered if his knees would get too sore on the floor there and then lost track of the thought, lost track of everything except the lips and tongue on her, the careful, wonderful fingers working inside her and her own body, thrumming and pulsing in response. Then the world seemed to break open and apart.

"Precious," Andrew whispered, caressing her hair. Precious. She was and it fit. He felt exactly like Golem here in the dark, clinging to the shinning goodness of her.

He thought of that other girl, the one that died. What _might_ have happened if things had gone just a little differently. It had gotten weird that night. Out of hand. What if it had been Dawn? Well, not so much the ex-girlfriend part, obviously, but the captured girl part, sure. It could have been her, in a parallel universe or something. Even with Dawn's arms around him, he began to shake.

The thought of anyone hurting her like that, anyone so much as touching a hair on her head...god. It filled him with inexplicable rage. Or what if, in yet another alternate universe, that stray bullet meant for Buffy had hit Dawn instead of Tara? He might never be able to forgive Willow for what she had done, but now he could understand it. A person who hurt Dawn might, in fact, be wandering right into skin shredding territory. The whole world might drown in blood for it.

Is this why, Warren? The more he thought about that night, the less he understood. Katrina, her name was Katrina. Is this how she made you feel? And if it was like this, _anything_ like this, then how could you hurt her like that?

He had loved devotedly Warren, still did, even as he let himself really think it through. It was deep and abiding somehow, infinite. Andrew thought he could maybe forgive Warren anything, even as horrified by it as he was, in retrospect. They'd never talked about it, but he was pretty sure Warren had known how he felt.

This was different, desperate and burning. This raw aching adoration, it was as if the core of him was carved out and hollow, and could be filled only with Dawn. It seemed to use a whole different set of organs in him. It wasn't better or worse, just unfamiliar. He didn't know what to do with it.

Dawn discovered that a chair with a stack of books on top made an adequate substitute for a tripod. They had also dragged in the chipped vintage standing mirror from the smaller bedroom to reflect the light from the lamp. It still looked harsh, she thought as she sat monitoring Andrew through the viewfinder, but it was better than the single interrogation bulb strategy they had begun with.

"So, yeah," Andrew said. "I was born in Sunnydale. Lived mainly with my brother and my great Aunt Clara...um...our Mom has always been kind of in and out. And Tucker and I have different dads. Neither of us ever knew them. Sometimes there were other guys...um...around. Sometimes I think that's what got Tucker so lost in the punch, you know?"

"What did?"

"Not being able to protect himself, or me."

She gulped and worked to keep her expression neutral, not wanting to distract him, or make him any more uncomfortable than he must already be. "From your mother's boyfriends?"

"Right." he said.

"Oh." She paused, unsure of how to steer to discussion forward. "So, Tucker got into summoning demons first?"

"Yeah," said Andrew, brightening considerably. "He thinks that we might actually have some demon heritage, on Mom's side of the family, from generations back of course. That apparently makes it easier. Like, sort of a natural aptitude? It works for controlling them too, which is really lucky, because the first time it happened with Tucker, he didn't expect it. He wasn't trying to do it or anything, it just happened. There was this real asshole who kept hanging around, even after Mom took off for...um...trying to remember...was it Boise? No, Buenos Aries. It was South America that time."

"He didn't turn out to be a robot, did he?" Dawn had to make sure.

Andrew shook his head. "No, Warren never built any male ones. At least, not that I ever heard about. Anyway, this guy had gotten real rough and Tucker was so mad, I mean, he was only I think ten or so, but he was just was just livid and the guy was passed out on our couch."

"And then Tucker called up a demon?"

"Well, we didn't know what was happening at first. There was just all this screaming. Aunt Clara was working late that night and we didn't know what to do, so we hid in the kitchen pantry until he was quiet. Then, when we came out, we saw it. It had six legs and scaly wings and it was eating the guy's guts. We were sure it was going to come after us next, but it just sat there munching, for like an hour or something, until Tucker finally yelled at it to get out and threw a can of peas at it."

"And it just left?"

"Yeah, it was amazing. It went right through the front door. Stupid guy had left it half-open. Tucker and Warren dug up this forum online, the one that became the Demons!Demons!Demons! site, and found out that it was a Heparyalee. Er...otherwise known as a pickle eater, since they feed exclusively on the livers of alcoholics. But that was much later."

"Eww!" Dawn cringed in disgust. Then she cleared her throat, attempting to regain some semblance of professionalism. "So, that man was hurting you and your brother and so Tucker accidentally summoned just the right kind of demon and it took care of the problem?"

"Basically."

"That's good then."

"You think so?" He asked in surprise.

"Yeah. He was a good brother, at least then. He did protect you."

"Not on purpose."

"Oh. Well...still. So he was always friends with Warren? Even when you were all kids?"

Andrew scratched at the back of his neck thoughtfully. "No, Warren moved to Sunnydale their freshman year, and then he was only at the same school for like a semester. The he switched to some other accelerated program. But Caper Comix had this running game in the back and they went there a lot. So did Jonathan and Xander and Jesse McNally for that matter. They used to let me sit in with them, sometimes. As long as I didn't talk too much."

Dawn shook her head. There was something here that seemed important; she just couldn't quite get at it. "They all knew each other then?"

"Well, yeah, kind of. Those games can be intense though, it's not like they had time to trade fashion tips."

"It just seems like...I don't know." She trailed off helplessly. "They didn't...nobody started out enemies. I just have to wonder if...if all the bad stuff could have been avoided somehow."

He shrugged, unsure how to answer.

"So, then somewhere in there, Tucker got angry and messed up enough that he trained the demon dogs to kill everyone at prom?"

"He did. And then The Slay-I-mean Buffy stopped it."

"Which was a good thing!" Dawn interjected.

Andrew was quiet.

"You _do_ agree that it had to happen, don't you? All those people-"

"Of course, Dawn! I couldn't keep him calm anymore. He just blew up all the time. Warren and I were walking on eggshells!"

"Warren?"

"Yeah. He tried to help, in his way. He even brought groceries over, well just chips & soda...but still, nobody else did."

"No way." Dawn was incredulous.

"Warren wasn't always...like that."

She wanted specifics. "Like what?"

"You know."

"Homicidal?"

"Um...I guess. I mean, he didn't...well, it didn't get like that until sort of recently."

"I'm starting to think it's the hellmouth," she said. "Maybe it radiates some kind of dark energy. Maybe it's the hellmouth that makes everybody around here crazy sooner or later."

"Meaning people aren't necessarily totally responsible for their choices and actions?"

Dawn thought he sounded all together too hopeful. "Not sure about _that. _So what happened after Tucker was committed?"

"Well, I missed him, of course. So I started honing my own summoning skills. I'm not as strong as he is though. Probably never will be. Tucker's kind of a prodigy, in that respect. But I did hit the school play with flying demon monkeys."

"Oh my god," she cried. "I was there, I remember that! Romeo-"

"And Juliet," he finished.

"But why?"

"Because it's a bunch of bourgeois, straight-privileged bullshit!"

"Oh, come on," she said, not buying this explanation.

"Okay, so I played Gregory, you know, at the beginning?"

"That was _you_? In the tights?"

He blushed deep rose. "It was senior year, I needed the arts credit. What were you doing there? I'm surprised Buffy let you out that late." He tried to smirk, like Danny Zuko. He failed. Epically.

"Hello? All freshman have to take World Lit, remember? I was supposed to write a paper on that play, which was, you know, kinda hard since _somebody_ apparently got it mixed up with the Wizard of Oz! Oh, and hey, bonus points for endangering my life, yet again, if you're keeping score." She glared at him, feeling real anger rise in her chest again. "You _are_ keeping score - aren't you?"

"No!" Andrew shook his head vehemently. "You were never in danger, I promise. That species is vegetarian! The worst that could have happened would be getting trampled in the stampeding crowd maybe."

She set her teeth together and raised her chin. "I _did_ get trampled. Brent Maddison stepped on my foot. Do you remember Brent?"

"Yeah, unfortunately."

"So you know, he's huge, like six-ten or something. He broke two of my toes!" And then, because she couldn't help it, she chuckled. "As he ran screaming out of there like a little girl. Which was, in fact, pretty funny."

They shared a glance, both suddenly shy and smiling. Nothing like the suffering of a common enemy to bring people together, she thought.

"So, do you think Dorothy was a Key too?" He asked suddenly.

"Wait, Dorothy-as-in-Gale? We're still on Oz?"

"Well...think about it. She moves between universes, she thwarts witches, her house is drawn into a cyclone vortex where she's protected and safe until-"

"Seriously? You know Baum was an opium addict, right? It's just a book-"

"Okay, maybe it's just a book, or maybe it's more Dawn! What if he was trying to pass on some secret knowledge embedded in all his mythology? What if the book is a message...or an homage?"

"An homage." Dawn repeated the phrase, skeptical and slightly irritated by the digression. "To whom?"

"To you."

"So you're saying Baum was some kind of prophet?

Andrew nodded. "Or a time traveler. His novels predicted TV, laptops, cell phones-"

"Cell phones?"

"Go pick up _Tik-Tok of Oz_ again, it's totally there!"

"Okay, okay - fine. Sunnydale is Kansas and Baum's the Wizard. What does he want with me?"

"Possibly nothing. Possibly, the whole thing's just a big shout out. Or," Andrew paused to take a breath, "or maybe I'm just over-identifying. My middle name's Lyman too, you know. And my Aunt Clara? Her maiden name is-"

"Baum," Dawn said, guessing.

"Frank, actually. But _her_ mother's maiden name was Baum."

"Well," she said. "Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are real too, it turns out. Both really evil and demonic of course, but real. I guess it's almost within the realms of possibility that you could travel a hundred plus years into the past and write kiddie lit about me, but if you get the chance, do you think you could throw a few more direct warnings in there? Like hey, that Ben guy isn't as nice as he seems, or even don't let anyone eat that fundraiser candy?"

"Um...sure," he said. "And I knew that. About Sinterklaas anyway. The Easter Bunny too though?"

"Oh yeah," said Dawn. "Absolutely. Can we get back to _Romeo and __Juliet_ now?"

"Okay."

"So, for real...why did you do it, Andrew?"

His smile faded. "We had to practice so much. The whole story was in my head for, like, months and the more I thought about it, the more it annoyed me. It was just stupid, you know? One giant case of bad timing!"

"The play?"

"Exactamundo! It's a ridiculous play if you really pay attention! Friar Lawrence could have gotten to the tomb sooner, Romeo could have gotten to the tomb later. Friar Lawrence could have put together a plan that did not rely upon medieval letter delivery service. Juliet could have gone with Romeo when he is initially banished from the city. They could have all been less...impulsive! The way it works out is so very Rube Goldberg, so avoidable! I just couldn't stand to watch it careening over the edge of plausibility, yet again. Nobody is that stupid all of the time!"

Dawn giggled. "How is it possible?"

"What?"

"How is a native of Sunnydale such a hopeless romantic?"

"It's not about romance, it's about narrative integrity," he sputtered.

"Same difference," she said.

"Not even."

"Even."

She loved it that he let her win the argument.

"So then it must have been you," Dawn was saying. "Who sent that demon to the bank that day. And then the other one...the really bad one."

Andrew squirmed on the couch. His eyes were tired. He wondered how long they had been awake. "Yes. It was me."

"And you know the fallout from that one - right? You guys had spy cameras on us by then. We almost died, all of us. You almost killed me, and you can't blame it on Shakespeare or Warren, or anything like that. I almost died that day because you happened to be feeling mean."

"I get it," he said miserably. "You know how sorry I am."

"And what about the girl?"

"What girl?" He was pretty sure what girl she meant. Oh god. "I didn't do anything. I didn't touch her, I swear!"

She drew back quickly, startled. "What do you mean?"

He wished there was a way to say it so what happened had a context. Because, he supposed, without context...it sounded sort of bad. Okay, really bad. But the whole point of this was truth, and his future pretty much depended on it. If Willow didn't kill Jonathan, Dawn might hear about it from him, and Andrew couldn't bear that either. So truth...how to say it and not lose her. How to trust her with it...

"It was an accident, that she died I mean. We didn't do it like, deliberately or anything. He-Warren designed it to make her our slave, and it glitched - that was all."

"Designed what?"

"The Cerebral Dampener."

"To make her your slave?"

"Right." Sweat trickled down his brow. It was her face that worried him now. There was no expression there, just a beautiful blank canvas, as if Dawn herself had been zapped by Warren's toy.

"And then what happened?"

It had just been a game, he thought desperately. Getting away with murder had meant nothing more than success, just winning the game. It had made sense at the time, just another roll of a twelve-sided die. It was sort of like being in a play, except for the part where they didn't drop their costumes off at in Wardrobe at the end of the night.

"I already told you. The tech went wonky and she woke up and freaked. She accused us all of rape and then ran and he was trying to stop her and he hit her with a bottle...and then she went down."

"That's what you going to do with her?"

"No! I mean, he...she was his ex. He was really pissed at her, but we didn't know."

"What if the glitch hadn't happened?"

"Nothing!"

She watched him, silently.

"Dawn, I couldn't _do_ that, not to anybody."

"That's what I needed to hear," she said. She switched off the camera and began to make her way toward him. "Has it all been recorded? Can we be done now, Andrew?"

"Please," he said. "Yes, I promise. Done. There's nothing else."

"Good, because I'm about to fall over." As if to prove her point, crashed dramatically onto the couch beside him. She eased her arms around him and laid her head on his shoulder. A little tremor ran from the top of his head down his entire body, but he didn't push her away.

His hands came up to find hers and their fingers intertwined. "You've forgiven me? Just like that?"

She nodded. "I do forgive you. Everything that you did, to my sister, to my friends, to me."

"How? Why?"

She moved closer until she could rest her head on his chest. "Because I want you more than I want the comfort of my pain. Because I need you more than I need to be angry, and wrathful and to have someone to blame. I want it, whatever it turns into, whatever it ends up looking like - back in the world."

"But Dawn, even aside from the prison avoidance issue, this part..."

She squeezed his hand. "This part might have to go on hiatus, at least until I'm eighteen and can do what I want. I'd rather at least get to have you around in some way, rather than not at all, and Buffy, she wouldn't-"

"She wouldn't get this part," he finished.

"I seriously doubt it."

"Wait," he said, "Do you mean it?"

"What?"

"That...um...you want me...around. After this."

"So many people just go...people go away and they never come back, Andrew. I never had anything, anyone that was truly mine, not really. Except for my sister, and even she's not always...so yeah, I want you to stay, even if we can't-"

The need in her eyes was so raw, he would have promised her anything to chase that look away.

"Please, can I go forward when my heart is here? I'm yours as long as you want me." He knew it was a dumb thing to say, a word that was impossible to keep, just a dream, and yet in the moment he meant it completely. She was, quite literally, his deliverance from darkness.

"Thank you," he said.

"For?"

"For being."

"Being?"

"Just for being," he replied quietly, tightening his hold on her.

"This isn't goodbye, Andrew. I mean, even if she does make you go to prison, I'll be legal in two years and change. With parole and everything, we'd probably get free at the same time. And even if Willow's on the other side of that door waiting for us, I've had proof of heaven too."

"And if I don't get to go there?"

She grinned mischievously. "Then I'll tell the devil to scoot over and make room for me."

They were silent after that, sprawled on the couch together, unsure of the time. When Andrew woke, it was because a frog was croaking loudly. Daylight streamed in through the cabin windows.

"Dawn," he murmured, rousing her, "look."

"We're back," she said, still dazed slightly. "Come on."

He stood when she did and followed her. She paused at the door.

"I'm really glad you came with me," Her voice was unsteady, and she gave him a shaky little smile.

"I'm beyond grateful you let me. I think...I think maybe _blessed_is the better word," he said. He leaned closer, so that his breath was warm on her ear. "I'm scared."

"Me too," she admitted, smoothing the top of his hand with her thumb. "But it'll be okay. We'll be okay."

"I believe you. I believe _in_ you, Dawn."

"Yeah," she said. "But we're not out of this yet, so don't get cocky."

He couldn't help but smile, partly because she'd screwed up the line and partly because she had thought to say it at all. Then she pressed her hand into his and they walked out into the sunlight.

(End)


End file.
